ARIN allocating /20 netblocks?

:: Jon Lewis writes ::

The change made it possible for many "small" ISPs to truely multihome.
FDT is one of them. When I found out about "the change", I was about to
renumber FDT into Digex address space, since we did not qualify under the
old rules for an ARIN CIDR block (immediately fill 80% of a /19). The
/20 Digex was going to give us was in filtered space, meaning anyone
filtering BGP like Sprint would not see our advertisements and would only
have reached us through Digex...making our additional T1's to the net
somewhat pointless.

Really? What is their new policy? Suppose you can only fill 60% of a
/19 ... do they give you a /20 (with permission to announce the /19)
and force you to use provider space for the other 819.2 addresses that
you need? My point is this: 100% of a /20 is 50% of a /19 ... so if
you justify need for more than 50% of a /19, that should be
jutification for a /19. (less than 50% of a /19 could be satisfied by a
/20). (and likewise for other sizes, both larger and smaller than /19).
Does ARIN not see it that way?

          - Brett (brettf@netcom.com)

Go have a look at http://www.arin.net/initial-isp.html for the full scoop.

BTW...I still think any organization paying ARIN registration fees should
"be an ARIN member" without having to pay additional yearly fees. Maybe
even make membership require that the organization either pay the yearly
membership fee _or_ an IP space registration fee, whichever is greater.